SUBRAMANYA CHETTY Vs. RAMAKRISHNAMMA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff Subramania Chetty, is the elder brother of Pattabhi Chetty, the husband of the first defendant. Pattabhi Chatty died in September 1914. His widow, the first defendant, has been carrying on the family trade in groceries, in which the plaintiff was at on a time partner, till there was a dissolution of partnership on the 22nd January, 1915, and a distribution of assets and debits under a deed of division, which is Exhibit B. The brothers, as a family, became divided in 1910. The suit was brought for a declaration that certain alienations made by the widow were not valid beyond her lifetime. The Subordinate Judge dismissed the suit on the ground that the first defendant had more than doubled the value of the properties left to her by her husband and that her transactions were bona fide.

(2.) When Pattabhi Chetty died, he left besides the widow, a daughter who died three years after her father. The first defendant's father Naganna Chetty, came and lived with his daughter after the death of her husband and assisted her to manage her affairs. Exhibit 1 is a power-of-attorney given to him to continue the maligai or grocery trade and to collect the rents of the shops which fell to the share of her husband. Besides carrying on the grocery trade, the first defendant completed a house for which her husband had left materials and laid the foundation and she built two new houses out of the capital left by her husband and these are rented out for Rs. 7 and Rs. 9 a month.

(3.) The law as to a widow's power to carry on a trade started by her husband, when that trade constitutes the main source of the subsistence of the family has been well settled. In Sakrabhai V/s. Maganlal (1902) 26 Bom. 206, Sir Lawrence Jenkins, C.J., laid down the principles, firstly, that in Hindu Law a business is a distinct heritable asset; secondly, that a manager can contract debts for the purposes of the business, and that even in the absence of a specific charge, they are recoverable from the assets of the business; and thirdly, that a widow can, under such circumstances, contract a debt for the purpose of a family business, to which she has succeeded, and by specific charge make it payable, out of assets of business even as against the reversioners. In another part of the judgment, the learned Judge observed that the business to which a widow succeeds, on her husband's death, "as a distinct asset, includes its debits as well as its credits; each is an integral part of the whole. How then, can a re-versioner, as heir to the business, claim to take the benefit of the one and to reject the burden of the other"?